Powder coat pcb with toner & laser sinter

Description

Ordered the crapsman powder gun, but self isolation is VERY BORING. So I built one out of a pickle jar using a horror fright electric flyswatter as a high voltage source. Because I couldn't wait. A real hack job, but I did wash out the pickle jar even though it says it's "kosher", then I made it extra super kosher with some precious alcohol and acetone. Believe it or not this works & deposits a uniform layer on the PCB. Now I have to assemble the finest chinesium laser engraver and see what details are possible.

Components

1 × Pickle Jar, eat the pickles Clausen pickles are good

1 × Harbor freight electric flyswatter FREE with any purchase sometimes

1 × Laser toner Sweep up by printer if you have a xerox

1 × Ballpoint pen write a novel or discard the guts & use the tube

1 × valve to adjust airflow

Project Logs

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Trying a couple layers..
eric • 04/07/2020 at 23:27 • 1 comment

The other boards are just examples. I actually need a breadboard-able RJ45, Amazon sell these for like 6-7$ each.
I'll try to make one.
I magnetated a square to the table with a big magnet underneath. So I can zap the board, re-coat & repeat. Gonna try 3 layers.
some shrinkage in large fields
eric • 04/05/2020 at 19:14 • 0 comments

I tried another board with large fields, I see shrinkage afterwards along the direction of laser travel. Might need to color these in with sharpie in certain cases, or do the borders & use paint/tape etc. I don't see this as a big problem, as long as I'm not fixing little stuff I'm happy.
Trying Lightburn
eric • 04/05/2020 at 19:06 • 0 comments

Burned one at 5% and 2200 mm/s and it's nearly perfect. But it's crooked & warped. Not going to bother wasting time on a pic. The software only accepts jpg, so I have to extract the image from the PDF. Then resize so it's right. The jpg is straight, but the print is way off.
So I'm trying Lightburn which imports PDFfiles, burning one now. The other possibility is the cable is getting hung up? We'll see. I can't get it to light the low power for testing size, but I used a big enough board to guess & it seems like it's going to work. I'd like to etch one of these eventually, since I have lots of acid just sitting here. FeCl
Test board #5
eric • 04/04/2020 at 22:04 • 0 comments

10% @ 1900 mm/s
Test board #4
eric • 04/03/2020 at 16:36 • 0 comments

SD card for scale
Getting there....
Test board 3
eric • 04/03/2020 at 05:12 • 0 comments

Try something hard:
I would not consider attempting this with any other home method. But maybe above this too, some problems in the tight spots. But then I notice the one I printed:
oops. Maybe it would have worked if I made it full size. Fail of the hour...
Board 4 is coming in about 1 hr...
Another test board & focus ramp
eric • 04/02/2020 at 20:36 • 0 comments

This is the ramp to check my focus, to the right is on the table, to the left is raised 3/4". Bottom line is 40% laser, 6th from the bottom is 15%. I still see smoke @ 15%, but I'm going to try it on the rest of the board.
So I shot this at table height @ 15% laser.
This is most certainly usable, I'd etch it but it's a mistake design I don't need. There's no voids or any of those missing spots you get with the paper peeling method. Just a nice layer everywhere it was intended to be. No guessing with the iron. Plus I'm washing my hands quite a bit with the leaky pickle jar powder gun. As soon as the real one gets here (movement now) this thing is going back to killing flies.
Test board 1
eric • 04/01/2020 at 19:47 • 1 comment

Laser power @ 85%, probably too high. Could be scaling issues since I had to convert the pdf to a jpg for the software. close traces are touching, I'm thinking from heat transfer to surrounding powder. I very much like the consistent and void free layer of toner this applies though.
Label created.....
eric • 04/01/2020 at 02:48 • 0 comments

The guy STILL didn't ship the craftsman powder gun. Then I'm gonna have to leave it on the porch for 72 hrs.

View all 9 project logs

Discussions

euchcat wrote 04/18/2020 at 21:02

The PCB shown in the picture is unusable, with tracks touching each other, cut tracks and circuit prints with short circuits between the pins . I hope this is not representative of the method presented, otherwise there is still work to be done on this project!

Are you sure? yes | no

Jarrett wrote 04/01/2020 at 04:53

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with the position on pickles expressed in this project

Are you sure? yes | no

Peter Walsh wrote 04/01/2020 at 04:26

A laser cutter will typically blow air down through the cutting head. The intent is to blow away any "cast off" from the cutting process so that it doesn't land and stick on the mirrors and lenses.

(Stuck bits of cast off will absorb the laser light and burn, ruining the optics. The optics have special metallic coatings, so when this happens the optics cannot really be cleaned.)

I've tried to sinter powder using a laser engraver, but ran into this problem. You can disable the air feed, but be careful about blow back into your optics.

I couldn't get this to work. Even with the air disabled the laser was too hot for the powdered plastic: it vaporized instead of melting. No amount of fiddling with the laser power would work, and the scanning motion of the head tended to blow the powder away in any event.

I'd be very interested to see if you can get this to work. There's lots of interesting hobbyist applications for this.

(P.S. - I'd also like to see details about the fly swatter powdercoat system.)

Are you sure? yes | no

eric wrote 04/01/2020 at 19:52

See latest project log, i may have it set too high but it seems to hold promise. My laser is pretty far from the work, so I haven't had the problem with the fan.

Are you sure? yes | no

Dan Maloney wrote 03/31/2020 at 18:16

I see a lot of things in this project that make me want to see more. A fabricobbled powder coater from a pickle jar and an HF flyswatter? Can't wait to see more!

Are you sure? yes | no

eric wrote 04/01/2020 at 02:40

Had to charge the camera

Are you sure? yes | no

eric wrote 04/03/2020 at 03:57

There's really not much to it. I have a tube going to the bottom of the jar, this is the inlet and serves to liquefy the powder and make a dusty cloud in the jar. I have a valve prior to adjust the airflow, I find tapping the jar is what gets the powder squirting nice. The outlet is just at the top of the jar, an elbow & ballpoint pen tube with wires soldered in an "x" over the metal tip - this charges the powder. The flyswatter is just 2 grids and counts on the fly touching both and he';s fried. I just connect one grid to the gun tip and the other to the work. The amazon box the cutter came in is my booth. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

It's just a quick and very dirty solution till the craftsman one arrives. I made sure I could re-assemble the swatter. I have another one packed away somewhere I used for a potato cannon igniter, if it turns out this thing is better than the craftsman.

Are you sure? yes | no

Dan Maloney wrote 04/03/2020 at 17:08

I can only imagine the mess with all that loose toner...

Are you sure? yes | no

eric wrote 04/03/2020 at 18:36

Lots of hand washing these days.

Are you sure? yes | no

Powder coat pcb with toner & laser sinter

Description

Components

Project Logs

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Trying a couple layers..

some shrinkage in large fields

Trying Lightburn

Test board #5

Test board #4

Test board 3

Another test board & focus ramp

Test board 1

Label created.....

Discussions

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Powder coat pcb with toner & laser sinter

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